The Mammoth Book of Paranormal Romance 2 (61 page)

Amused, the other gargoyle chuckled quietly and shifted on his taloned feet, rattling the heavy iron manacles that ensured he and his companion remained at their posts. Even if they weren’t shackled in place, these two Strange beasts couldn’t touch me and they knew it. Harming a human was punishable by death.

But they could hate me.

They could despise that I made my living as a mercenary, although I’ve always preferred to think of myself as a
facilitator
. Generally speaking – and for the right price – I was a problem-solver. When something needed to get done quickly and quietly, no questions asked, folks with the money and the means usually turned to me to make it happen.

Tonight’s job was no different. I had been hired to pick up and transport a cargo shipment for someone who preferred to keep his business at the seedy Port Phoenix dockyard confidential. Not that any of the lowlife humans working the yard, or the even lowlier Strange enslaved there as labourers, would give a damn what was coming or going from the supply freighters that arrived from all parts of the globe.

Still, my client had his reasons, I supposed, and that was good enough for me. I didn’t need to know who he was or what I was moving. All that mattered was the two rough-cut diamonds currently tucked into the fur lining of my boot and the three that would be given to me after I’d delivered tonight’s cargo to its destination.

The big human guard humped out of his shack near the gate, a long black rifle slung across his body from a wide leather shoulder strap. I leaned out and he peered at me through the rusted iron bars, recognition lifting the heavy brow visoring small, avid eyes that made my skin crawl. “Back so soon, eh, Nisha?” He grunted, leering now. “You sure are a woman in high demand these days. Not that I’m complaining about that, of course.”

I gave him a smile that a smarter man might have recognized as loathing. “What can I say? Business is booming.”

He grinned as he unlocked the gate and let me drive through. “Which slip is it tonight?”

“Three-East,” I said through the open window, the designation indicating the docks where cargo from New Asia arrived. When the guard hopped up on to the truck’s running board alongside me, I gave him a flat look. “I know the way.”

He dropped back down with a scowl. “That freighter just came in about an hour ago. They’re still unloading. Could be a while before they’re done, so if you need to get out of the cold, you come on up and I’ll let you sit with me in the guard house.”

I waved him off without looking back. The icy rain was turning to sleet, pelting the windshield like tiny pebbles. Burrowing deeper into the hood of my parka, I drove towards the deep-water port that had long ago been desert lands and city skyscrapers – before the planet’s shift had cracked a wide saltwater chasm between the island of Mexitexas and the shrunken coastal borders of North America. As I neared the enormous ship moored at the slip marked 3E, the stench of brine and steel and belching exhaust fumes blew into the open window, clinging to my throat and stinging my eyes.

I slowed to a stop near the loading ramp, where four big, tusked trolls were carrying a tarp-covered crate across the plank to the dock. They shivered in the bad weather, their clothing sodden, their long braided beards dripping water with each lumbering step. The workhorses of the Strange, trolls were built like tanks and able to labour tirelessly in all kinds of climates. These four walked gingerly – almost reverently – with the large rectangular container, one of them on each corner, taking great care with it. A human supervisor waited at the end of the ramp, closely monitoring their progress.

“Be careful with that, you brainless clods!” he barked. “One slip and I’ll have your bloody hides!”

I got out of my rig and walked over to the dock boss. “I take it this one’s mine?”

He grunted in acknowledgment and wiped the back of his filthy hand under his runny nose. That same hand then reached out to me, palm up. “I’ll have my payment now, Nisha.”

I dug into the pocket of my coat, withdrew a chip of cloudy pink stone and dropped it into his waiting hand. “There you go. One quarter-carat raw ruby, same as always.”

His greedy fingers closed around the paltry gemstone that represented a fortune to him. The little rock disappeared an instant later, and I didn’t follow his hand to see where he’d stuffed it. “Whatever’s in that thing, it’s got my labourers spooked,” he told me, staring through the sleet as the container neared the end of the ramp. “What the hell are you picking up tonight?”

“Don’t know and don’t care,” I said. “I don’t get paid to care.”

He scoffed. “No, I reckon you don’t. Most folks say you’d sell your own mother if the price was right.”

“Harsh,” I replied, wholly unfazed. The insult was based on reputation, more than fact. All of which served me just fine.

As for my mother . . . it was harder to remain unaffected by the thought of her. She was killed years ago, when I was just a young girl. The nightmare of that day still haunted me, sometimes even when I was awake. Her death had haunted my father too, until his heartbreak had finally claimed him.

The dock boss said nothing more, watching with me as the trolls carefully brought the crate off the ramp and set it down in front of us. The contents shifted slightly as the box came to rest on the ground, something metal clacking quietly from within. Whatever was inside must have been valuable, given that it was protected from the elements in an enormous sheet of rare, extremely expensive plastic.

Guns, I guessed, having transported a fair share of munitions in my line of work. I stepped up to the corner of the crate to check the bindings on the plastic tarp. Although they looked secure, I wanted to be certain before I gave the okay for the trolls to load the container into the back of my rig.

As I reached out to test the straps, something growled and began to move inside the box.

Something big.

Something mired by what sounded to be heavy chains and shackles, but something very much alive.

A couple of hours later, I was sitting atop an empty grain barrel in the back of my truck, eating a tin of hydrated soymeal for supper while I waited for my client’s people to come to the private warehouse where I was parked and relieve me of my newest cargo. I had to admit, if only to myself, I was eager to be rid of it.

I’d never moved live goods before and, despite my willingness to transport all manner of other things without batting an eye, I was suddenly wondering if the three diamonds waiting at the end of this job were payment enough. More than that, I was wondering about the contents of the container sitting just a few short paces away from me in the truck. Speculating on just what was shuffling around inside there and what my client could possibly want with it.

I picked up the instructions the dock boss had handed me before I’d left Port Phoenix. They were written on a small square of dried animal skin that had been affixed to the container at its point of origin. I’d read the directions already – three succinct orders, penned in a bold hand:

I set down my empty soymeal tin and hopped off the barrel. From where I stood, I saw there were small tears here and there in the plastic tarp. I knew whatever sat inside the large box had been watching me the whole time I’d been in the back of the truck with it. I’d felt eyes on me – shrewd, predatory eyes. Now, as I walked closer to the covered crate, the fine hairs at the back of my neck rose in warning.

“They say you are colder than ice,” came a deep, cultured male voice from behind the concealing plastic and confining wood. “No one ever mentioned that you were also very beautiful. As dark and enticing as night itself . . . Nisha, the Heartless.”

I didn’t say anything at first. Shock stole my breath and I stood there for a long moment, dumbstruck and unmoving. I hadn’t expected to hear my cargo speak to me, let alone know my name. Oh, I’d assumed it was some kind of beast in the crate – even now, I knew that he was something Strange, more than likely – but the smooth tone and elegant voice took me aback completely.

“What are you?”

“Come closer and see for yourself. I have no wish to harm you, even if I were able.”

I snorted, snapped cleanly out of my stupor by that treacherous invitation. “The only way I’d come any closer to one of the Strange is to put a pistol up against its head.”

“Ah, yes,” he said, exhaling a quiet sigh. Chains clinked and straw rustled as he moved about in his tight prison. “How you love your weapons, Nisha. Particularly when they are used against my kind. Many have died because of the weapons you’ve put into the hands of bad men.”

“I do what I have to in order to survive,” I said, unsure why I felt the need to defend myself to him. “I’m in the supply-and-demand business, that’s all. My clients pay me to deliver things they want. What they do with those things is not my concern.”

“Hmm.” He shifted inside the crate again, and I could feel that assessing stare locked on me still. “So, you’re saying that you would just as easily sell your weapons for war to me – to one of the Strange – if I had the wherewithal to meet your price?”

I wouldn’t and we both knew it. I glared at the covered crate. “I don’t need to justify what I do, least of all to someone like you.”

He released a heavy breath. “No, you don’t. And it was pointless to even ask it. My kind has no desire to wage a war against man. We never did.”

“You’d never win anyway,” I pointed out flatly. “You have too few numbers, for one thing, and most of you are indentured, besides. Wars take more than guns, you know. They take vision and determination. They take leaders, and that’s something your kind has lacked all along. If the Strange were going to fight, they should have done it long ago.”

“Yes. You’re right, Nisha.” I heard regret in his voice now, and told myself I had no reason to feel guilty for that. “But there are those among my kind who believe that, in time, there will be peace.”

I exhaled a humourless laugh. “That’s why you’re sitting in a crate in shackles, about to be shipped off to who knows where and for what purpose.”

“I know what lies ahead for me,” he replied, that velvety deep voice as calm as I’d heard it so far. “I won’t be enslaved. That’s not why they took me. My capture will have only one outcome.”

“Death,” I whispered, ignoring the twinge in my chest. I wanted to see his face in that moment – whether or not it was Strangely hideous – to determine if the thought of dying scared him even a little. It didn’t seem to and I held my ground, fisting my hands at my sides instead of reaching out to move aside the tarp that hid him. “You know you will be killed.”

“Eventually, yes,” he said, without a trace of fear or sorrow. “I feel my death might serve a higher purpose.”

I shook my head, unsure if he could see me or not. For some reason, despite everything I knew and felt about his kind, his resignation bothered me. More than bothered me, it pissed me off. “You’re just giving up. Don’t try to pretend it has anything to do with honour.”

“Sometimes, Nisha the Heartless, there is a greater good to be gained in dying than there is in living. For me, certainly. I go to my fate willingly.”

I barked sharply. “Well, then, I guess that makes you either very courageous or very stupid.”

I reminded myself that he wasn’t my problem. His fate – whether or not he welcomed it with open arms – sure as hell was not my concern. I walked over and picked up my empty soymeal tin, my movements tight with aggravation.

“I’ve had enough thought-provoking conversation for one night,” I told him, more than ready to spend the rest of the wait up front in the cab by myself. “Get some rest. Your other ride should be here soon.”

I jumped out of the back of the truck and closed the doors, sealing him inside.

I fell asleep in the cab.

The dream woke me, as it always does. Not the violent nightmare I’d had since my parents’ deaths, but the dream that started soon afterwards and visited me more often than I liked. This time, everything seemed more vivid – so real I felt as though I could sweep my hand out before me and touch it.

Sunlit skies. Glittering azure ocean. And me, soaring high above it all, twisting and gliding on a gentle wind towards an infinite horizon.

I jolted awake, trembling and breathless.

It was the usual reaction. Just the thought of flying terrified me. The act itself was unnatural, whether achieved in the thunderous, now obsolete, metal machines of decades past, or as performed by those rarest of the Strange who’d needed none of man’s inventions to aid them. Flying was nothing I’d ever done, or ever wanted to know anything about.

Desperate to purge the troubling sensations, I pushed myself up in the driver’s seat of the cab and fumbled for the wristwatch I kept fastened to the steering wheel. It was an ancient wind-up type, the only time-keeping devices that still functioned in the post-technology age. I checked the gloved hands on the smiling black-and-white mouse.

“Shit.” I’d been asleep for more than two hours.

The truck was quiet. No movement at all in the warehouse and no sign of my client’s people coming to take the Strange cargo off my hands yet.